Excitement is building among Democrats who believe they're making headway in the Texas Senate race against incumbent and two-term Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, pointing to polling that shows them not losing as badly as they anticipated, The Hill reported Monday.
Although the RealClearPolitics polling average has Cruz leading Rep. Colin Allred, D-Texas, by 6 points with seven weeks to go before election day, "enthusiasm is high" among state Democrats for what they see as momentum since Vice President Kamala Harris became the party's presidential candidate, according to the report.
"For a Democrat to win statewide Texas, it's a big lift. It's a heavy lift. But Colin Allred has pretty skillfully put himself in a position to be in striking distance here," Matt Angle, founder and director of the Lone Star Project, a Democrat PAC in the state, told The Hill.
Further proof, Democrats say, is that Cruz is struggling to get above the 50% threshold in the myriad polls. To wit, the RCP average has Cruz leading 48% to 42%.
"If you're Ted Cruz or a Ted Cruz fan, if in the closing months of an election, you're not at 50% and you're not closing that margin up towards 50%, that's going to be problematic," former Republican National Committee pollster Brett Loyd told The Hill.
Democrats had similar aspirations behind former Rep. Beto O'Rourke six years ago amid a blue wave in congressional elections. Cruz defeated O'Rourke by 2.6 points with 50.9% of the vote.
Despite the hopefulness, the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee said it isn't allocating any money behind Allred given the vulnerable incumbents in myriad other states. One Republican pollster said there's another reason for that, and Democrats know it in the end.
"I just find it hard to believe that [former President Donald] Trump is going to do significantly worse than he did last time in Texas, and the same for Cruz. I just feel like we're in a better position now with the national political landscape," Republican strategist Brendan Steinhauser told The Hill.